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Healthy Weight & Your Child

What is 5-2-1-0

The Theory Behind Let’s Go! Launched in 2006, Let’s Go! is centered at the Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital at Maine Medical Center, in Portland, and is implemented in partnership with MaineHealth. Let’s Go! is a childhood obesity prevention program that promotes evidence‐based strategies to boost healthy eating and physical activity among children through the age of 18.

The program is rooted in the social ecological framework of behavior change—that people’s behaviors are influenced by many factors including family, friends, local surroundings, built environment and community. In order to bring about behavior change, the supporting environments and policies must be changed to make it easier for people in those environments to make healthy choices.

The Let’s Go! model design has two major components: 1) deploying a consistent message, 5‐2‐1‐0, across multiple community settings to remind families and children how to make healthy choices, and 2) working with a network of local partners to implement changes to environments and policies that increase opportunities for healthy eating and active living in six settings: schools, child care programs, out of school programs, healthcare practices, worksites, and community sites.

The mnemonic, 5‐2‐1‐0, represents four evidence‐based recommendations for healthy eating and physical activity each day: eat 5 or more servings of fruits and vegetables, limit of 2 hours or less of recreational screen time, engage in 1 hour or more of physical activity, and drink 0 sugary beverages.